


Alone in the Dark

by SegaBarrett



Category: Wiseguy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:44:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2022168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempt on Sonny's life has Sonny and Vinnie running for their lives, and Vinnie trying to catch his breath long enough to figure out where he stands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Wiseguy, and I make no money from this.

Thoughts of Sonny Steelgrave were buried deep in Vinnie Terranova’s subconscious. It was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, or maybe it was an itch that in a way, he didn’t want to.

It was nearly impossible to explain it to McPike without sounding as if he was out of his depth or even out of his mind. When he opened his mouth to try and even explain it to himself, it all seemed to come out wrong, jumbled, like he’d written the words down and tossed them around like Scrabble pieces. When he put them in order, they didn’t spell anything that actually made sense.

Vinnie wished that he could sleep. Maybe that would help him to figure it all out. But sleep hadn’t come easy to him these past few weeks, ever since he’d put on another face, another life. He looked at himself in the mirror some days and wasn’t sure who he was really looking at. Was it him, or was it the false face, the friend of Sonny Steelgrave, the button man? 

Who was even the real Vinnie Terranova? Or were they both him? Was neither of them him?

He reached up and took the phone off the hook. 

He would call McPike; no, he would call Sonny. No, he would call Pete.  
After a few moments battling back and forth, he hung it up. There wasn’t anyone. Not now, anyway. He hadn’t seen this coming when he had joined up – he had seen the line in his mind as so black and white, a thick white line like the shoulder of a road. He was driving on the line, now, though – or walking on the shoulder, or… He didn’t know what he was doing, or why he couldn’t get Sonny Steelgrave’s face out of his mind no matter how hard he tried to shake himself free.

Vinnie pulled his blanket back over his head. What he would do, what he would do was sleep. That would help him to sort it all out. He would sleep and he could delude himself into thinking that any of it would be clearer in the morning.

He shut his eyes and turned off the light.

The second he hit the dream world, he was running. Running from something; what, he couldn’t tell, other than that it was big, blue, and mean. Something snarling, like a big angry dog. He couldn’t turn around to get a good look, though, because he had to keep running. Had to stay one step ahead.

He crashed into something, and something was grabbing him, or maybe someone. Whatever it was, it was whispering his name into his ear, whispering, “Vincent Terranova” like it was a curse instead of a name.

He bounded awake and had to bit his lip to keep from screaming. He bit it so hard that it bled, and he was gasping next, in pain and fear.

The door to his room opened, and Sonny Steelgrave was standing there, right in front of him.

“We’ve got to go. Right now, Vinnie.”

***

“What is it?” Vinnie scrambled awake, pulling the rest of his clothes on and tossing out a thought about what it would have meant if Sonny had seen him in more of a state of distress, or naked in another way, in the throes of that crazy nightmare. “Why do we have to go? Where?”

“People are after us. Royce is dead. Someone picked him up, tortured him, dropped him on my doorstep. Three other enforcers, they’ll gone too. Someone has a bulls-eye with my name on it, Vinnie. Someone wants me dead.”

“I thought a lot of people wanted you dead,” Vinnie spoke up. 

“That’s the problem,” Sonny replied dryly. “It’s going to take me a while to figure out which one it is. That’s why we need to get out of here, so stop playing with your dick and get packed.”

He walked, or more-so glided, out of the room and Vinnie was left watching after him and trying to figure out exactly what he should do. To maintain his cover as Sonny’s confidante, he needed to go along with him, didn’t he? But that would be walking deeper into Sonny’s world. 

His fingers tapped against the night table frantically. What should he do? Maybe this was some kind of test. If it was a test, then Vinnie had to make sure to pass it. After all, what happened around here if one failed a test was that they were left in a ditch and never heard from again – Vinnie thought again of the beautiful female police officer who Sid Royce had had killed, and he didn’t feel very badly about the fact that Royce had been killed. But he had to not end up like either of them if he wanted to see this through.

He didn’t have many choices. He needed to follow after Sonny; at least, his heart as well as his rational agent’s mind were both telling him that that was his best move, both for his life and for his cover. He ignored the little tap-tap sound in his head that was adding something that sounded suspiciously like “and his heart”, because that was a thought that didn’t make any sense at all. And Vinnie didn’t have time for nonsense; he needed to grab essentials and he needed to get out of here.

***

They were on the road within minutes, with Vinnie still rubbing his eyes and trying to work out the steps that had come between. It was as if he had awoken in this car with no knowledge of moving there, like it was another dream, a scene conjured up in his head trying to tell him something about the place he was in without being direct.

Vinnie had never been able to stand Freud. If dreams were really wishes, then why did he keep dreaming about Sonny? What did he wish about Sonny other than that the assignment was over?

Vinnie wasn’t an idiot; he knew that there was another possibility. He knew that there was the chance that somewhere inside him, he was attracted to Sonny in a way that couldn’t be summed up as “drawn in by his charisma”. 

It wasn’t exactly something new. In prison, he’d learned how to keep away from some of the nastier guys in there by staying close to the biggest, baddest inmate of the bunch. He’d helped him out on more than one occasion and the man had kept Vinnie safe in return. But he’d looked at it as an extension of his duty, then, not as anything he actually wanted to do.

“Sonny,” Vinnie spoke up, leaning his arm on the car door and trying to figure out how to work this to his advantage… no, wait, that wasn’t quite right. He was trying to find a solution where no one would get hurt. Not him, not McPike, and not even Sonny. Not badly, at least – catching a case wouldn’t be the same as hurting or killing him. There was a line, there was black and white… at least, there was supposed to be. Wasn’t that the whole point?

“So kind of you to join us, Vinnie,” Sonny drawled. “Anything you want to add to the conversation?”

Vinnie rubbed at his eyes.

“Yeah, I’d like to find out if I can chime in and ask where we’re headed.”

“We’re going somewhere safe.”

“Safe by whose standards? ‘Cause, given that I don’t know who’s trying to pop all of us, nowhere really feels all that safe right about now.”

Sonny let out a chuckle that sent a shiver up Vinnie’s spine.

“Don’t you understand our… symbiotic relationship by now, Vinnie? I keep you safe, you keep me safe. That’s how it works.”

“But safe from what? That’s what I’d like to know. If you know what’s out there, then, well, tell me. Because otherwise how the hell do I know what to look out for? Is it Patrice that’s behind this, or Mahoney? Or somebody else entirely?”

Vinnie thought about what his loyalties ought to be here. Of course, he wanted no one to die in this mess. That’s why he had become a cop, hadn’t it? He’d seen too many people around him die, seen too many people sucked into this horrible system, this monster that ate young kids alive once it marked them for the slaughter.

So if Sonny gave him a name, or even a direction of where to strike… what the hell should he do? Should he go out and try to protect Sonny? Isn’t that what Vinnie Terranova, the hood, would do? What about Vinnie Terranova, the cop – and when had they become such different people? Neither would want to pass the other in a dark alleyway, that was for sure. Each held too much in his head, things he could never tell the other one. Things he never wanted to tell. 

“If I knew, you think I’d be running, Vinnie? Of course not. I’d be staying and fighting! Now listen to me. If they start shooting, ya keep your head down. You got it?”

Vinnie rolled his eyes. 

“I know that much. You think I made it this far by being stupid?”

“Yeah, I do,” Sonny told him. “You’re brave, but brave and stupid… they’re the same thing a lotta times. You understand me?”

In a way, Vinnie did. Either attribute meant you didn’t think about the consequences, you just went right out there and you did it.

Vinnie sighed. That sounded like him, all right.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’ve been told that I’m stupid a lot more than people have said that I’m brave.”

His mother certainly thought so. The whole being-undercover part meant that he couldn’t tell her what was really going on. She thought he was really a hood, that he really worked for Sonny Steelgrave. That he was a ne’er-do-well, a lost child that would never come back.

If only he could tell her…

But no, what could he tell her? Would he tell her that even as he worked against this man, that he was falling for him?

***

When they finally got to the motel, one that was in the middle of nowhere and looked like it existed for no other reason than to house mobsters on the run, Vinnie couldn’t sleep.

He found himself looking around the room he had been given and wondering if the place had started as a front or had turned into one after business had gone bad or maybe after Sonny needed a motel for whatever reason and had blustered in brandishing a pistol and demanding the place.

Could he really be falling for the man if he could picture that scene in his mind that clearly?

He wished he was in the same room as Sonny. He told himself this was so he could look the man over and find out what he was up to, but maybe there was something in him, something calling out just below the surface, like blood boiling or a heart pumping, that told him to be near him.

At least he was out of earshot. Now he could make his phone call, couldn’t he? Not without a brief sweep, of course. He stood up, feet firmly in the ground as that old song went through his head, the one that went, “Secret agent man/odds are you won’t live to see tomorrow”.

He dialed the buttons as quickly as he could when he got to the phone. His ears were already burning with the lecture that he was no doubt going to get from McPike. At this point, he couldn’t even really blame him. Would he even make it through the day? 

“Hi, Uncle Mike,” Vinnie said once the Lifeguard picked up with his usual greeting. “Patch me through to McPike.”

“Where have you been, nephew? McPike’s been pretty worried about you, you know.”

“I’m in kind of a jam, Uncle Mike. But I’m going to be all right. I’m safe. It’s just complicated.”

“It sounds like it’s been complicated for a while now.” The Lifeguard had a non-judgmental kind of tone to his voice, or maybe Vinnie was just projecting it because that was what he desperately needed right about now. He needed someone to understand.

Because the things he was thinking of doing as he pictured Sonny asleep in his bed were things that he’d probably be right to be judged for.

“Everything is complicated when Sonny’s around,” Vinnie replied dryly.

There was a long pause, and Vinnie thought that maybe the Lifeguard had hung up on him, that maybe this last betrayal was too much, that maybe this was a question that any answer would be too good for.

“McPike is out looking for you,” the Lifeguard told him a moment later. “And nephew? Whatever you do… However you play this… I’m in your corner. And McPike is, too. Just remember that.”

Vinnie heard footfalls on the way to the room, and he hung up. Wherever McPike was, he couldn’t save him now. He didn’t want McPike to find him. He didn’t want to face what the things he was thinking of might mean about who he really was. 

No one could save him now. 

He was on his own.

And maybe that was the only thing that would see him through this at all.


End file.
